The basic idea of SOCIUS has hardly changed in the more than 25 years of our existence: We make our contribution to social transformation by developing sustainable relationships in organisations.

The history of SOCIUS is itself a story of transformation - from the impulse energy of the pioneering phase to the power of collective responsibility in our work today. Since the founding of SOCIUS Organisationsberatung gGmbH by Rudi Piwko, the current 10-strong SOCIUS team - Christian Baier, Andi Knoth, Nicola Kriesel, Kerstin Engelhardt, Joana Ebbinghaus, Denise Nörenberg, Julia Hoffmann, Lysan Escher, Hannah Kalhorn and Yi-Cong Lu - has formed itself in various „waves“ as a slow growth organism.

Over the years, we have developed with the trends in our field and have helped shape them in many ways:

• 1998-2005: In the founding years of SOCIUS, the dominant themes in the non-profit scene were Professionalisation and institutionalisation. In the first seven years, SOCIUS focussed on financing strategies and the structural consolidation of associations and initiatives as sustainably effective actors. Milestones during this period include the financing guidelines we developed for initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe, the handbook on generating own funds and the development of modules in various social management degree programmes (including in Fulda and Potsdam). At the same time, our self-image as a process consultancy was increasingly strengthened during this time. At the end of this phase, SOCIUS is a team of five with the motto: „We accompany change in non-profit organisations“.

• 2006-13: In the environment of the 2010s, the turn towards Participation, civic engagement and the rise of the social enterprise movement formative in our field of action. In this episode, SOCIUS is travelling a lot in contexts of participatory urban development and advises alliances and associations of the sustainability movement and independent education. Our process support became longer, the organisations we supported larger and more international - more extensive projects took us to Central Asia (support for the development of a regional care system in Kazakhstan) and North Africa (support for youth and media projects in Tunisia). In 2010, we founded SOCIUS eG, initially as an umbrella organisation for regional SOCIUS advisory teams in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne. It soon becomes clear that we cannot maintain the trusting personal relationships on which our advisory work and cooperation as an organisation are based without day-to-day encounters with over 20 people. As a result, the cooperative becomes the partnership home for SOCIUS in Berlin. We find a new claim: Working together in a meaningful way.

• 2014-21: With the publication of Frederic Laloux's ’Reinventing Organisations„ (2014), a breath of fresh air is blowing through the already agile international OE Self-organisation in the guise of sociocracy and holacracy is a celebrated promise; consensus moderation and role-based working are sought-after areas of expertise, even outside the non-profit world. For SOCIUS, this is an opportunity to sharpen up our own collective practices once again. To mark SOCIUS' 20th birthday, the five shareholders of the gGmbH are selling their shares to the eG. The cooperative structure provides us with a formal framework for our aspiration to realise the equal value of all team members in the further development of SOCIUS. Our fascination with the topic of self-organisation also becomes a prominent pillar of our consulting profile. The surge in engagement in the wake of the migration movements of 2015 and the subsequent social tensions, which are further fuelled by the coronavirus crisis, are increasingly shaping the background to our work. The feeling that there is is about something, The fact that negotiation is necessary and at the same time increasingly difficult is clearly evident on the stage.

• 2022-today: In the post-pandemic era, the dominant challenge facing our field is no longer one of awakening, but of stabilisation. The experience of the polycrisis, the fragmentation and the view from the edge of the plate of complexity towards chaos brings the need for conscious strengthening of Resilience, mental health and Regenerativity with it. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that many basic assumptions of the established system are no longer viable, that resilience in the sense of continuous renewal also requires a critical view of power, a courageous approach to conflicts and new forms of exploring the future. SOCIUS faces up to these challenges, which do not pass us by, with a willingness for continuous learning and personal development: questioning established patterns and rank dynamics, strengthening the muscles of collective responsibility and the search for pointed and at the same time unifying positions are part of this development, which we accompany and carry out ourselves.

• FuturesA time is dawning in which fundamentally new practices must be developed, incubated and disseminated in order to to reconstitute society in large parts. Our knowledge and experience will not be enough to overcome the challenges and uncertainties of this process. We will invest even more in strengthening networks and communities and cultivate rituals of shared imagination even more intensively in order to counter the threatening backdrop of these times with something positive and confident. Our journey continues...

How it all began

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